Doc Apocalypse

The last experiment of Dr. Lewis p.Higgins has gone wrong. Something awful had crossed over through a portal, and the army had responded with the only resource deemed appropriate, a hail of nuclear bombs. There's a single hope: Lewis has to reach the time machine and warn himself, eight months earlier, to prevent the Apocalypse...

Is it possible to control the weather? Is it possible to make it rain on demand or to chase the clouds from the sky? Controlling such things would mean saving the planet from drought, living in a world without hurricanes and storms, always having abundant crops and keeping the glaciers safe. According to Lewis P. Higgins, this was not fantasy, but reality. He was aware of the fact that the technology he was in the process of completing would, in the wrong hands, be a weapon for the destruction of the human race, but, idealist that he was, he felt he was working for a good cause. Lewis was a strange character with a troubled life but also many successes and achievements: an eight-year-old son of whom he was proud; a nearly completed device that would be able to stop earthquakes; a time machine that allowed one to travel into the future for twenty seconds; many objects of varying type and importance; and the Cloud Buster, which was practically complete.

Whom to present his inventions to, how to present them, how to be sure that no one would put these resources to terrible use? Those things mattered little right now. Before overcoming the moral difficulties, he had to deal with the practical ones, namely testing and improving, making reliable machines that were not dangerous to operate. It had been with one such prototype of a machine to control earthquakes that he had seen his wife die. During the testing process, Jenny, a scientist like him, had lost her life in an explosion. Lewis had not been able to come to terms with the event, and the pain grew when he saw in his son's eyes the look of his mother. As a result of this tragic experience, during tests on the Cloud Buster, he decided to be alone in his bunker and to leave his son in the laboratory in Montauk (a small nearby town) with his new partner, who was also a scientist. Elzebeth Tesla was not happy having to give up attending the experiments, but she loved the little boy (Tobias Higgins on his birth certificate, but known to everyone as Tachy, a shortened form of "tachyon") very much and respected his father's wishes. Nevertheless, she was able to be attend the events via monitor. Nothing could happen to them ten metres underground in a bunker that was identical in every way to the one where the experiment would take place and that had every comfort; as well as the time machine, there was ample food, a CD player, all kinds of video games for Tachy...

In 1953? Yes, the time machine provided a few "out-of-place" possessions, but Lewis did not take things too far and went out of his way not to incur paradoxes, at least, not dangerous ones... some clothes from 1985 for Elzebeth, a few DVDs for Tachy and some electronic components with which to complete his machines. The important thing was to appear in the right place at the right time (who said "thief"?). Completing the time-travel project would not be easy. Unfortunately, the time jump worked one time in a thousand. Sometimes he was able to see his entire invention in the future, in 1974, to be precise. Once he even spoke to himself in 1976, but in twenty seconds it was difficult to have a very productive conversation. Everything was ready for testing in the laboratory of Doc Apocalypse, as his college friends had renamed him (his ideas were often the grounds for scorn or great terror). He pressed the start button and the enormous propeller, set on top of the nearby mountain, hidden from view by ancient trees, was set in motion, projecting an energy flow towards the menacing clouds covering Serenity. After twenty minutes, a widening path was dissolving the impending storm and the camera pointed at the sky clearly demonstrated that the experiment had been a success.

Unfortunately, something went wrong.
Bolts of energy ripped through the sky and accumulated in the area torn apart by the rays from the propellor. The last thing Doc Apocalypse was able to observe before the monitor signal was lost was gigantic shadows and indistinct swarms.
Immediately he warned Elzebeth and Tachy to remain in their bunker until he arrived. Collecting the car keys, he suddenly halted. The speakers in the laboratory filled the room with the screams of terror of the inhabitants of Serenity. Horrendous roars alternated with screams of terror: ten metres above his head, something terrible was exterminating the populace. He urged his family once more to remain where they were and ran to the control panel, rapidly pressing buttons and gathering reams of data understandable only to him.
After twenty hellish minutes, the speakers relayed what he feared: horrifying explosions silenced everything. The gauges in the laboratory indicated high levels of radioactivity, but from the speakers there was only silence. The experiment had gone decidedly wrong. Something awful had crossed over through a portal that had appeared with no logical explanation, and the army had responded with the only resource deemed appropriate, a hail of nuclear bombs. From the extent of the explosions, he realised that this was not a new Hiroshima but an onslaught of multiple bombs of smaller size than the one used in the 1945 event.

How widespread was the disaster? How many creatures had emerged from the portal and how far had the bombing extended? He had no way of knowing.
The auxiliary power system switched itself on, and he was still able to communicate with Elzebeth despite there being no electricity (or anything else) coming from outside. He could not leave or he would die. He could only wait, watching the radioactivity gauge. According to his calculations, he could not open that damned door for eight months, at which point he would suffer only minor damage (more or less). He explained the situation briefly to his beloved and they said goodbye to each other for the last time thirty days after the bombardment. After that, there was only an anxious silence, with none of his apparatus working and four blue light bulbs powered by small solar panels placed outside, which had fortunately remained intact.
Eight months passed.

He took the atomiser, the heart of the time machine (he had not been confident leaving the mechanism active while Tachy had been around), opened the door and took a deep breath. The air-regenerators of own his invention, which had been active in the bunker, had done their work, but breathing real air, albeit still contaminated, was satisfying in an entirely different way.

He had to find his family, force his way through the rubble and survive in the face of anything he might meet out there. Activating the time machine (fortunately it did not require electricity, only the atomiser) would have been easy, however it was a much more complex matter to program it for a jump into the past. He was not yet capable of doing that, although the idea of being able to save his wife, before he had met Elzebeth, would spur him to overcome the problem.

His mission was a simple concept, but confoundedly difficult to realise: to go and warn himself, eight months earlier, to prevent the Apocalypse.

MAIN FEATURES

- In-game visual noise
- Many items to collect, not all of which can be used
- Dark humour in a story unsuitable for younger players
- Food for thought on delicate issues of counterculture and exopolitics
- Help button in every screen (directions, interactions, ...)